me.'

'I should not like to touch it, dear Radie. And pray how do you amuse
yourself here? How on earth do you get over the day, and, worse still,
the evenings?'

'Very well--well enough. I make a very good sort of a nun, and a capital
housemaid. I work in the garden, I mend my dresses, I drink tea, and when
I choose to be dissipated, I play and sing for old Tamar--why did not you
ask how she is? I do believe, Stanley, you care for no one, but' (she was
going to say yourself, she said instead, however, but) 'perhaps, the
least in the world for me, and that not very wisely,' she continued, a
little fiercely, 'for from the moment you saw me, you've done little else
than try to disgust me more than I am with my penury and solitude. What
do you mean? You always have a purpose--will you ever learn to be frank
and straightforward, and speak plainly to those whom you ought to trust,
if not to love? What are you driving at, Stanley?'

He looked up with a gentle start, like one recovering from a reverie, and
said, with his yellow eyes fixed for a moment on his sister, before they
dropped again to the carpet.

'You're miserably poor, Rachel: upon my word, I believe you haven't clear
two hundred a year. I'll drink some tea, please, if you have got any, and
it isn't too much trouble; and it strikes me as very curious you like
living in this really very humiliating state.'

'I don't intend to go out for a governess, if that's what you mean; nor
is there any privation in living as I do. Perhaps you think I ought to go
and housekeep for you.'